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Thursday, July 28, 2016

This month I was able to attend the once a month all day sewing day. This is a group hosted at a church, so this month I worked on putting together a new quilt top for them.

I'm quilting each block with a different design, then will join together and bind the effort. (I've FMQed before, but have not hinged blocks together for an entire quilt top, so this will be new for me!)

They gave me the batting and a piece of fabric for the back. The piece for the back isn't large enough it turns out so I'm using different fabric. So far I have two blue (and patterned) backgrounds and two green ones, so they are sort of the same colors as what is on the front.

This will be good practice for me, it's been quite a while since I have done any free motion quilting!

Hopefully, I'll get me confidence back and can finish up some projects again!

Monday, July 25, 2016

This month the Play With Me QAL board game is HEX, so of course the game board is made of hexies.

In the pattern, several methods of making them are explained, but since I'm using denim from old pants, it seemed the traditional English paper piecing would be impossible.

I decided I needed to resize the pattern so the game board would be more symmetrical, that means I made the hexies so they were smaller. I didn't know enough the beginning to realize it would then make the pieces even more difficult to manage!

I found a lot of help online to get the hex board done with the machine:

This way you just cut the fabric and sewed on the backing:http://modernhandcraft.com/2015/01/hexie-pincushion-a-tutorial/I didn't see this until I had already finished several rows using my primitive draw the outline of the hexit method. I was afraid I wouldn't get things lined up exactly enough... but the photos on the modernhandcraft.com site were so appealing. I decided I needed to at least test the method.So I did. I tested the method with a smaller number of hexies and was really pleased with the result. This is something I will try again! (If I hadn't already done so much work on the project I would have switched to this method for the gameboard.)

I eyeballed all of this. Think how terrific it would be if I premarked the lines!

I printed one that would fit on a regular sheet of paper, drew the line for the game board, and challenged my husband to a game! (Somewhere I read that during WWII people would play paper versions of this game provided by their government or army while waiting for the 'all clear' in underground shelters. I didn't save that link, but it was interesting in a sad way to think about.)

So now I had the game to preserve on the pillow!

The pillow front will be around 18 - 20 inches so the size of the design could be larger than the piece where we played the game. I enlarged and printed two times. I then cut and taped the two pieces so I had a life sized pattern. I transferred the pieces showing the game to be preserved on this pattern.

I decided on my fabrics, made a template to trace the design using the top of a plastic container. I tried tracing with a pencil and pen, but they distorted the fabric too much, so I decided to take advantage of the fabric being so thick and just use a Sharpie.

I randomly made outlines on the back of different denim. Then arranged one row to match the colors in my game board. Sewed the straight seam for that row. It didn't look like this was going to work out, but I thought I'd continue until I came up with another way to do it.

I sewed one hexie at a time to the next row for a while. It was really difficult to keep track of what was to be sewn together! So I thought to join the hexies in order for the rest of the row and then join them together. This made it much more manageable!

(Actually I tried using my sashiko needle and thread to join some pieces when I was at a sewing group without a machine. But a smaller needle and or thread would have been better, so I removed what I could and sewed together again with the machine.)

So for the rest of the project I would do that. Sew the eight hexagon pieces together so they were order, then I would start at a place where there were different colors to be joined and sew. Then I'd return to the other side of the colors and continue sewing the row.

Rows sewn together on the flat sides, paper pattern, and right side of sewn rows.

To help ensure the matching of the intersections and to help me keep track of which seam I was sewing, I placed two pins at the start and end of each seam. (I put them in by looking at the drawn lines on each side.)

Backside showing next seam to be sewn. Pins matched on both sides of the drawn lines placed to show me where to sew.

I would place the piece under the machine and lower the needle, then would remove the first pin before starting to sew.

About to put the needle down and remove the pin.

At first this was very difficult for me to do, and not fun at all. I'm not sure if it ever would be fun, but it was very do-able and I am pleased at how it looks at this point. This would not work for a quilt as it would be too bumpy, but for a pillow in the game board series will be very nice.

Front side of the piece without borders.

But now I need to work on the borders for the game board! At first I didn't think the borders would be important, but for the game it's important to show the players the sides of the board they have to start and end.

First I was going to just trace the pattern on a strip of fabric and sew each seam as I had done before...

But I lost my confidence, so went back to making individual hexagons and sewing things together.

!! If I do this again I will simply add the ends when doing each row!!

Nine hexies in each black row. The coloring didn't make it clear that the corners could belong to either player.

The last two rows were easy to add. I was starting to think ahead for how I was going to add the rest of the pillow front to the game board. But something wasn't right. There were more hexies in each of those rows.

There was several hexies removed and replaced, and removed and replaced, but finally I settled on making two hexies that were half of each color and then placing them in the larger angles of the piece. (So all the border sides have 8 1/2 cells of a color.)

First I put a border around the game board. Then I cut two rectangles - and then cut them on the diagonal and sewed those on the piece. I made a template to help me with the size of the front of the pillow, pinned that down and then cut the piece.

I am behind with making several of my game boards into pillows, but that is still the plan.

I have admired hexie quilts for a long time. I know I didn't do this in the correct way. It seemed more important to make it using the denim for this project. I don't think I ever would have put this on my bucket list, and even if I do not make another one (with regular cotton and larger pieces) I have a new found appreciation and amazement at the work done by others.

Friday, July 22, 2016

I used to go there as a child, and brought our son there a few times so we could visit my Godmother and go to museums and be tourists. The week before he took his driving test I had him drive the LA freeways as sort of a final driving check. He did a wonderful job of handling the traffic.

But this time it was just my husband and me.

Do you know what these painted lines are for? My Mom told me when I was a kid..... >>>

Hotel Lobby

Hotel Art

These looked like hand rails with different things wrapped on them for decoration.

Turns out the museums were closed on Tuesday, but there was a book talk so we attended that while we were there...

Hope plants the seed, love makes it grow.

At Antique mall I found hand sewn hexies for sale.

Tile design at mall.

Typical corner. When the walk sign goes on can walk from all corners in all directions.

Afternoon snack at Irish Pub - it was hot day but this place had nice fans.

City Hall

An entire building just for permits!

Look thru here to see photo of what was in that location 100 years ago!

Trying to make lemonade out of lemons..

>>> The lines help the float drivers know where to guide the Rose Parade floats!

When I was a kid we used to come early in the morning to see the parade. After a while we even brought chairs instead of sitting on the curb. Now have to get tickets on grand stands that are set up on the street. Hard to get a hotel room, too far to drive there from San Diego so never went with my DH or DS. I have nice memories from my own childhood though...

After our walk we returned to the room to cool down before going to the book talk.

After the book talk we ate at San's Restaurant, had some lovely sushi and Korean food.

We met friends at Spanish Landing, then called Uber to take us downtown, so we could watch folks dressed up for Comic-Con 2016!

Comic-Con International: San Diego is a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular artforms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.

Spanish Landing

The tickets for the events are sold online and sell out very quickly. We came before the huge rush of attendees years ago. Came just for the evening - saw the vendor area and sat in on a great Star Trek panel. It was fun. Wish we had done that more with our son. But it was fun to share the evening with friends.

After the crowds downtown we went to Tom Ham's Lighthouse at the end of Shelter Island for an end of the evening drink.

This was my first time at Tom's Lighthouse at night. We sat outside and were in awe of the beautiful view. Definitely the best time of day to bring out of towners!